It is known in the art to attached an outsert to the outside of a container, for example, a medicine bottle. An outsert is a folded piece of paper containing printed information or instructions regarding a product or the content of the container to which the outsert is affixed. Typical outserts are folded numerous times into a compact package which is then shrink wrapped to the side of the container, such as illustrated in FIG. 6 of the U.S. Pat. No. 5,458,374 issued to Vijuk, et al. on Oct. 17, 1995. Other known outserts are folded and attached to the side of a bottle through adhesive such as illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,351,991 issued to McDonald on Oct. 4, 1994.
However, while these folded outserts are suitable for attachment to the sides of containers such as medicine bottles, items which are shipped and are sold in boxes obviate the need for attaching such outserts to the container since informational material may simply be inserted into the carton or box in which the product is shipped and is sold. However, there is a disadvantage to inserting printed sheet material into boxes. For example, pharmaceutical companies supply doctors, who in turn supply patients with medicine samples in a box. Instructions printed on sheet material are also inserted into the box. However, the pharmaceutical companies often have to place the printed information into the boxes by hand resulting in a time-consuming process. Further, doctors and/or patients who received these boxes containing the medicine samples often do not take the time to read the instructions because they are difficult to remove from the carton. Additionally, many companies and manufacturers wish to include business reply cards inside boxes. However, all to often, these cards are never seen or hard to extract from the box and thus intentionally overlooked and discarded with the box.
Accordingly, there is a need for an efficient, time-saving package design that is easy for users to readily access the printed information pertaining to the product therein and/or the company or manufacturer, and further that is easy to use, can be readily accessed, and is time efficient to manufacture. The present invention solves the problems related to inserting printed information into boxes by providing a folding carton with an attached informational booklet, brochure, pamphlet or the like to the outside of the box and including a business reply card which is detachable from the outside of the box and is used to cover and protect the informational brochures.